@sr_: you are almost right, because the answer yum groupinstall "Development Tools" would help me. But how do I find the list of those meta-packages and is there a list matching them up across distros? That is part of my question, too. I searched on the site before I asked.
– 0xC0000022LFeb 1 '13 at 14:27

You can use yum grouplist to get a list of groups.
– TomHFeb 1 '13 at 14:56

@TomH: exactly what I was looking for, together with yum groupinfo. Unfortunately as derobert pointed out, it appears that the scope of "Development Tools" is bigger than build-essential. Write it up as an answer and you will at least get one upvote :)
– 0xC0000022LFeb 1 '13 at 15:02

3 Answers
3

You won't find exactly matching package groups for unrelated distributions, they are different distributions precisely because they don't agree on some fundamental issues. Note that different distributions select different upstream packages to install, and also group/split upstream sources differently before adding in local configuration. Most recognize the split between runtime and stuff required for development (normally -devel or some such in the package name), and perhaps documentation and extra examples. Your best bet is to dissect the group of the source and install the respective packages on the destination. You can try to match the detailed package list from the previous step to whatever grouping the target provides. Probably the group names give some guidance, or you could look at some webpage giving an overview of the package structuring (can't find anything for Fedora, just the differences between the latest and older ones, sorry). Lots of work, sure.

So, I would have to assume that one could look at the included list and see what it provides. Looking at /usr/share/build-essential/essential-packages-list, you see that these packages are installed as part of build-essential:

Looking at this list, I would have to assume that some of these are already installed on Red Hat by default, so just install the missing packages. I highly doubt you will find an all encompassing package that just installs these for you.